This newsletter follows each Business Messages Office Hours meeting, summarizing news from Google and from our brand and partner ecosystem.
Industry news 🧨
Sector overview
- Will conversational commerce be the next big thing in online shopping? (Paywall). Spoiler: "the rewards look tasty."
Google Phone gains a quick way to message a business (more info here.)
M&A activity and funding:
- Klarna Buys Online Commerce Startup Hero (congrats to all at Hero!)
Top questions this week 🙋
"Can we use chips/suggested actions to trigger a phone call or SMS?"
We do provide the ability to trigger a call using Dial Action. See the developer site here. We don't support an SMS link (as this leads to a fragmented and potentially confusing conversational experience).
"...conversation data that is passed, we don't get the user emails, right?" Correct. We pass first and last name (where the user has allowed this), but not email or other PII.
"Customized CSAT: Is this possible through the API? Or console only?" You can use either the console or the API.
" I see all registered users are mapped to the owner role. We would like to modify their roles. Can we edit owner role to manager or reader?" You can modify the role of a ‘manager' or ‘reader' user in the console, just not ‘owner' (reach out to bm-support for this).
"Is it possible to add Chat extension in the Google Ads ?" Yes! You can email us at project-message-help@google.com
"Do business messages support sending audio, video?" No, not currently.
"Is there an example of a public bot using Dialogflow CX?" There are 1.7 million users of Dialogflow. If you call a Verizon contact center, you'll engage a Dialogflow CX bot.
Free, 1 hour training session 🎒
Want to hang out with Adam (+ his dog) some more? Sign up here and get a solid gold hour of introduction to Business Messages. July 21st.
What's new? 🚀
Carsheet
Tap a car in dealership search listings and see a Chat button!
Rolling out to launched dealers in the US only Android only today (Entry point is indicated as placesheet)
User Management Give console access to your colleagues! Instantly assign manager and reader roles to team mates
Documentation for the Console Don't know your API from your console?
Check out the new docs providing a comprehensive overview of Console use and functionality.
Coming Soon…⏲️
Customizable surveys
Create customized surveys through the API and in the Business Communications Developer Console. With it you can extend the feedback surveys of an agent to a total of five questions with up to two template questions and up to two custom questions.
Read receipts
Receive an event to your webhook when a customer has read a message. When a user allows read receipts to be sent, we'll forward them to your webhook as well!
Dialogflow CX + Business Messages (and lego swag!) 👕
Hopefully you were fortunate enough to hear the wonderful Lee Boonstra talk about Dialogflow CX this week. Dialogflow is the sister product of ES, and is the right product for complex bot experiences. Below is an example of the visual flow design tools built into CX.
Lee told us about the upcoming Dialogflow CX competition, and the Business Messages team got pretty excited about their Lego swag.
Sign up here. Everyone gets a t-shirt, and there are prizes for the best ten. The top 50 ideas will be open-sourced.
Free Dialogflow CX Training Course
Everyone that signs up, will be enrolled in a free Dialogflow CX Qwiklabs course. You will be able to learn how to design conversational flows and how you can build integrations.
This online course has been developed by Google, and is highly recommended as a training resource!
Agents of the week 🤖
Submit your agents to get showcased at Agent of the week!